Despite his injuries, Ryker stayed on the scene for several hours, though kept well back from the action, well back from the growing crowd of police and paramedics that grew as night wore on to morning, and as the sun rose low in the east. By that point Ryker, wounds dressed and body full of drugs, had taken a position alone, by the edge of the water, watching Pettersen. About thirty yards away, she spoke with two plain-clothed men who Ryker presumed were police, given their looks and their stiff manners and the way Pettersen held herself with them – though Ryker was sure they, and most of the others who had arrived, weren’t local, but from a central command further afield. The fact alone that they’d taken nearly two hours to get to the factory was a giveaway.
Pettersen glanced over and in doing so drew the attention of the two men. Ryker carried on staring. Eventually, the men turned and headed for the warehouse, and Pettersen slowly walked over.
‘You’re shivering,’ she said to Ryker.
‘A warm shower would be nice.’
‘I can’t believe you’re still here. I can’t believe you’re still awake and not in a hospital bed.’
‘I’m kind of used to it.’
She looked curious but didn’t say anything more to that.
‘You should go. There’s nothing more you can do tonight. This morning, whatever it is now.’
‘I’m free to go?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t think you should be?’
‘Those bigwigs don’t want to talk to me?’
‘Bigwigs?’
‘The out-of-town police.’
She looked over her shoulder, as though expecting them to be there.
‘I’m sure they will. But you’re not under arrest, and there’s no reason to keep you here. Why don’t you go to town? Back to the guest house and get a few hours’ sleep.’
‘I don’t have a car. I came here with you, remember.’
She sighed, but then her face relaxed. Not a smile, but not far from it.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a ride.’
* * *
They didn’t go to the guest house. Despite their tiredness, Ryker knew they were both also hungry. The café was open with a small number of customers enjoying breakfast and coffee.
Ryker and Pettersen received suspicious glances from all around. Perhaps because of the bandages and the state of their clothes, all bloodied and dirtied and mussy. Perhaps because Ryker, the outsider, sat down to eat with a local police officer, or, most likely, Ryker decided, because everyone in the close-knit town already knew most of what had happened at the factory, even if Ryker still struggled to get his head around it all.
‘We wouldn’t have this outcome if not for you,’ Pettersen said.
Ryker didn’t know how to take that. The three Russians were dead. So, too, was Berg and a number of other locals. Was that in any way a good achievement?
‘Do you know who Jesper is?’ Ryker asked.
Pettersen shook her head. ‘I’ve never heard that name until now.’
‘He clearly has a connection to this town.’
‘You really believe he’s Henrik’s father?’
‘I believe he’s the kind of man who has assassins and gangsters working for him. Who sends people overseas to extort and torture and kill. And you said yourself the Russians have a long history here.’
A little bit of color drained from Pettersen’s cheeks.
‘You think he’ll send more people here now?’ she asked.
‘I think he’s not going to be very happy with how tonight went.’
‘But he won’t know anything about Henrik.’
Fair point. Berg had – probably very deliberately – kept the truth of Henrik’s parentage to himself. His plan of extortion hadn’t gone to plan – far from it – and in his death, and the deaths of Jesper’s henchmen, the secret remained a secret, at least to Jesper.
‘Not yet, he doesn’t. But, in my experience, secrets like that have a habit of coming out one way or another.’
Pettersen didn’t say anything. Their food arrived. Both dug in, the silence extended and grew more awkward.
‘What will you do now?’ Pettersen asked after a while, a certain sadness, apprehension in her question.
‘Shower and sleep.’
She smiled but it didn’t last long. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘You saved Henrik. You brought down the bad guys. Nothing for you here anymore, I guess.’
She held his eye as she spoke. He wasn’t sure if there was a hidden insinuation to her words or not, whether she hoped for a correction. Was there anything in Blodstein for him? Well, there was her.
They carried on eating. Ryker finished his plate without another word spoken. Pettersen still had more than half of hers left when she put her knife and fork down. Nothing like a night of bloodshed and near death to spoil an appetite.
‘It’ll be me to tell the families,’ she said, even more stoic than before. She shook her head. ‘So much pain.’
Ryker had no answer to that. He hadn’t known Erling, Sonja, the others, except in a combative sense, but, of course, they’d each have loved ones. The unseen innocents always suffered.
‘I can sense you’re going to beat yourself up about this,’ Ryker said. ‘But you shouldn’t. None of this, none of the pain or the death, was caused by you or me. Berg, the Russians, Erling, Sonja, they all made choices. Bad choices, if you ask me.’
‘You’re saying they all deserved to die?’
Anger now.
‘No,’ Ryker said. ‘Not all of them. But their deaths aren’t on you. You were fighting for the right side. Just remember that.’
She looked out of the window but said nothing.
‘Have you heard the one about the bank robber and the Norwegian?’ she said, turning back to him, her face still downcast.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘It’s the Wild West. A hooded robber bursts into a bank and forces the tellers to load a sack full of cash. On his way out the door, a brave customer grabs the hood and pulls it off, revealing the robber’s face. The robber shoots the customer in a flash. He looks around and notices one of the tellers looking straight at him. The robber instantly shoots him also. Everyone in the bank, by now very scared, looks intently down at the floor in silence. The robber yells, “Well, did anyone else see my face?” Silence. Everyone is too afraid to speak. Then, an old Norwegian lady tentatively raises her hand and says, “My husband got a pretty good look at you.”’
She tried not to smile but it didn’t work, especially as Ryker grinned back at her.
‘Good one,’ he said, though he wondered whether the joke had come to her mind due to some sort of corollary with the Bergs’ rocky marriage, which had hardly helped the situation come to a happy end, even if Isabell had survived.
Pettersen’s phone blipped. She picked it up and stared at the screen.
‘I need to go,’ she said.
She got to her feet.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ryker said. ‘I’ll pay.’
‘No need. We always eat here for free.’
She nodded over at the waitress in acknowledgment, then glanced back down at Ryker.
‘You’ll still be here later?’ she said.
‘In the café?’
‘No. In Blodstein.’
A pleading look in her eyes.
Ryker nodded.
She turned and headed for the door.
* * *
An hour later Ryker was sitting on the wall by the crossroads, hands in his coat pockets, his head huddled down. With a gray sky above letting no sunlight through, the morning felt colder than any other he’d experienced in Blodstein, and that was saying something. Perhaps his tiredness and his injuries had sapped his resistance.
Across the road, a figure turned onto the footpath from a side street. Slight, not very tall, hood over the head. Ryker thought it was a young woman at first, but as the figure neared he realized who it was. Henrik. Without properly looking up, he found his way to Ryker’s side where he turned and propped himself up against the wall.
‘You’re waiting for the bus,’ Henrik said.
‘Yeah,’ Ryker said.
‘A long wait. It only comes three times a day.’
‘Not long to go now.’
‘Do they know you’re leaving?’
Ryker presumed ‘they’ meant police. Either way, he didn’t answer.
‘Where are you going to?’
‘South.’
‘Out of Norway?’
‘Eventually.’
Silence for a few moments. An old man and woman approached further down the street. They were a few yards away when they stopped, pondered, then crossed the road to the other side. Deliberate?
‘This all happened because of who my dad is,’ Henrik said.
‘I think so.’
‘Do you know him? Jesper?’
‘Never met him. But I can imagine the type.’
Ryker glanced at his side. Henrik stared with curiosity but didn’t ask what Ryker had meant.
‘He’s not a good man, is he?’
‘Hard to imagine he is, given what happened here.’
‘Will you try to find him?’
Ryker held his eye until the boy looked away. He could only imagine the conflicting thoughts going through his head. His whole world had been turned upside down, but he’d also been involved in carnage and death and… had himself killed. A turning point, for sure. Which direction would his life take now? A long, dark path lay in front of him. But it wasn’t the only path.
‘Sorry,’ Henrik said. ‘I just thought… that’s maybe what you do. Track down the bad guys wherever you go. Make them pay.’
Ryker sighed. He closed his eyes for a couple of beats. Willing his mind not to take him where he thought Henrik wanted him to go. He knew the more he thought about it, thought about Jesper and the devastation his actions and commands had caused, the more he’d want to make amends.
‘Would you come with me?’ Henrik asked.
Ryker didn’t answer.
‘If I told you now, I’m leaving here. I’m going to Russia. I’m going to find Jesper, my father, and kill him for what he’s done. Would you come with me? Help me? Protect me?’
Ryker looked back at him. ‘You don’t want to do that.’
Henrik glowered. ‘Don’t I? Look at what he’s done.’
‘By all means, leave this place,’ Ryker said. ‘Perhaps it’s best if you do. You have nothing here. But if you go after Jesper now, most likely you’ll end up hurt. Dead. Even if you don’t, even if you do somehow manage to find him, take your revenge, the story doesn’t end there. It never does.’
‘But if I had you to help me—’
‘If you had me… you’d only be drawn to even more bad shit. That’s the way it is.’
‘That’s why you’re running?’
‘I’m not running.’
‘Going from place to place. No home. No friends.’
Ryker said nothing.
‘So not Jesper. Not yet. But I could still come with you. Wherever it is you’re going.’
Ryker had to admire his tenacity. And resilience. Bravery. And even though he was sure that he had so much he could teach someone young like Henrik about the world, about life, he was also sure… No, Ryker really didn’t know what he was sure of. He just knew a fourteen-year-old boy had no place by his side.
‘Sorry, kid.’
Ryker looked off to the left. Movement. A car. A police car. It pulled to a stop by the side of the road across the other side of the junction. No one got out. Ryker kept his eyes focused on the windscreen. Pettersen?
‘You like her,’ Henrik said.
Ryker didn’t answer. The sound of a chugging diesel engine filled the air. Ryker looked the other way and spotted the bus coming toward them. He got to his feet. Henrik moved alongside him. The bus pulled to a stop and the doors opened. Ryker looked at Henrik and simply shook his head.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
The boy sank a little and shuffled back. Ryker glanced the other way. Pettersen stepped out of her car but she didn’t come toward him. She hung off the open door as Ryker moved onto the bus.
He paid and took a seat in the near-empty space.
When he looked out, Henrik had already gone. Where to, Ryker had no clue. Would Henrik be safe now? Ryker really didn’t know, but whatever Jesper did or didn’t know about his biological son, Henrik surely wasn’t the kingpin’s enemy.
A hiss as the doors clanked shut, and a plume of diesel smoke wrapped around the back of the bus as it shuffled forward.
Ryker caught Pettersen’s eye. She stared right at him. Disappointment, more than anything, etched on her face. He felt bad. Guilty. A little sad for them both. He lifted his hand in a sort of a wave. She hesitated but did the same.
Moments later she was out of sight behind him.
* * *
The gray sky above remained as Ryker walked along the harbor front in Trondheim, though the air was filled with sleet which blasted into Ryker’s face from the sea. The ferry had arrived. Ten more minutes until departure. He had a ticket in his pocket but remained torn as to whether he’d made the right decision.
He stopped a few steps from the pedestrian entrance. Cars and lorries slowly crept along toward the hull that was wide open like a whale swallowing shoals of fish.
He took out his phone. Went to the call option. Only Pettersen’s number in this handset. But what would he say if he called? Only hours ago he’d walked away from her. For good. Was he about to turn around now and head back?
As much as part of him wanted to, no, he wasn’t.
Then there was Heidi, the happy, chatty redhead he’d encountered on the ferry over here. He still remembered her number. Certainly her company, if he stayed here any longer, would make a refreshing change to the last few days of carnage…
No. Not her either.
Simona, back in Prague. No. He was done there too.
Despite everything, it was Pettersen’s number his finger slowly typed out. Then promptly deleted. No. He liked her. He liked so much about her in fact, but the long, quiet, boring drive from Blodstein to here had made him realize one thing: everything he liked about Pettersen was because she reminded him so much of someone else. Not Angela – no one would ever match her and how she’d changed him. Pettersen reminded him of Sam Moreno.
Should Ryker have left her? Was he really protecting her by being away from her?
He subconsciously typed out her number as his brain rumbled. His fingertip hovered over the green button, waiting.
A man called out to him. Norwegian. He didn’t understand the words. He looked across. An orange-jacketed man standing by the ferry beckoned to him.
‘Are you coming?’ he shouted out, English now. ‘Last chance.’
Ryker sighed as he cleared the number, then stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
With one last look over his shoulder, one last thought of what, and who, he was leaving behind, he stepped on board.